Rate My Professor Michael Glass

Michael Glass serves as Director of the Urban Studies Program and Assistant Professor of Urban Sociology in the Department of Sociology at the University of Pittsburgh. He holds a Ph.D. in Geography from Pennsylvania State University (2007), with a dissertation on Changing Spaces – Communities, Governance, and the Politics of Growth; an M.Sc. in Geography with first-class honors from the University of Auckland (1998), focusing on Innovation and Interdependencies in the New Zealand Boat-Building Industry; and a B.Sc. in Geography with honors from the University of Auckland (1996). His academic career at the University of Pittsburgh includes roles as Visiting Lecturer of Urban Studies (2008–2013), Lecturer of Urban Studies (2013–2019), Teaching Professor of Urban Studies (2019–2023), and Assistant Professor of Urban Sociology (2023–present). He assumed directorship of the Urban Studies Program in January 2020 and holds a secondary appointment in the Graduate School of Public and International Affairs.

Glass specializes in the socio-spatial production of infrastructure, positionality and reflexivity in geographic fieldwork, comparative global urbanism, urban regeneration policies, regional change, and the geographic imagination, with expertise in Southeast Asia, North America, Australasia, and Europe. He co-founded the Network on Infrastructural Regionalism (NOIR) and has edited volumes such as Infrastructural Times: Temporality and the Making of Global Urban Worlds (Bristol University Press, 2025, with J.-P.D. Addie and J. Nelles), Urban Violence, Resilience, & Security: Governance Responses in the Global South (Edward Elgar, 2022, with T. Seybolt and P. Williams), Performativity, Politics, and the Production of Social Space (Routledge, 2014, with R. Rose-Redwood), and co-authored Priced Out: Stuyvesant Town and the Loss of Middle-Class Communities (NYU Press, 2016, with R. Woldoff and L. Morrison). Key publications include 'Regional Infrastructures, Infrastructural Regionalism' (Regional Studies, 2019, with J.P. Addie and J. Nelles), 'Bridging ‘Infrastructural Solutions’ and ‘Infrastructures as Solution’’ (Urban Studies, 2024, with J.-P.D. Addie), and 'Seeing like a City through the Singapore City Gallery' (CITY, 2018). He serves on the editorial boards of Journal of Urban Affairs and Regional Studies, Regional Science, and is the Regional Studies Association's Territorial Ambassador to the United States. Awards include the 2023 Collaboration Champion Award (Community Engaged Scholarship Forum), 2022 Distinguished Geographer Award (Pennsylvania Geographic Society), 2015 Bellet Award for Teaching Excellence, Global Studies Faculty Fellowship (2022–2023), and Humanities Center Co-Teaching Fellowship (2021–2022).